Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The dying young maple tree

This morning on my walk along the lakefront at sunrise, I stopped at a memorial tree, about 15 ft tall, dedicated to a young man who had died at age 20, over 20 years ago. Those types of memorial plaques are sad to read and I always think of the parents and siblings, who may still note the special days. "This year he would be 41," or "I wonder if he'd be married and bringing his children to Lakeside."

Unfortunately, the tree was dying too. I think it is a combination of our dry weather this summer, and over mulching. It had the "volcano" mulch style instead of the donut hole, so what little natural watering we've had through rain couldn't get to the roots. This tree still needed gallons and gallons of water each day to survive. It was born and bred in a nursery, not particularly hardy like the "volunteers" I see growing up through the boulders that were brought in to protect the shoreline.

Last Friday classmates from my high school graduation class gathered on the campus (the college closed in 1932, but it is still called the campus) to dedicate a tree to memorialize our deceased class members and friends. Over the years, many of the trees have died, and last summer a terrible wind storm took down many. A few words were spoken about each person and an original poem written for the occasion was read. What a nice idea. I hope to have some photos soon to put on the class blog.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Note to Norma...we are watering our tree every other day and the day of planting it was given a 30 soak...not easy sinc we are carrying water. Three of us will be rotating the watering duties. The nursery mulched our tree and I have gently,gradually removered the heaviest of it,as one committee member disagreed and thought lots of mulch was better...she will never notice the mulch is lessened.I left the mulch on until after photos were taken, so you will see mulch in photographs. I will keep everyone updated on this tree and hopefully it will fare better than the one in this sad story.